Cheap Goods? Anyone?

Thanks to the overheated economy of China, cheap goods have flooded the streets of every major city in South East Asia, and more so here in the Philippines. In contrast to the usual cost of a legitimate imported good with all the warranties and tariffs that goes with it, items from China are surprisingly more affordable. This is assuming that you could put up with the quality relative to its cost. Even so, more and more alternative items have enabled even those on a tight budget to have the capability to purchase more gifts for the holidays.
I remember several years back in Divisoria when everything was peddled on the streets or stalls, much like how it still is on other places like Baclaran in Paranaque. You have to endure the heat due to the congestion and sheer volume of people. Bringing a car is not viable since parking availability is next to impossible. These setbacks shooed away shoppers with deeper pockets who preferred more convenience. Nevertheless, every Christmas season, Divisoria continually attracted shoppers who were willing to brave its streets for a bargain. The annual increase in popularity not only attracted shoppers, it also lured in mainland Chinese merchants to put up their own stalls. Chinese dealers who initially supplied goods to local dealers found it more profitable to do the retail themselves. Overtime, the retail and wholesale concept became an option for every shopper depending on the volume of purchase and could be negotiated outright. This model eliminated the retail middlemen from the consumer’s end.
Historically, Chinese and Filipinos have a long history of trade. Chinese-Filipinos (Chinoys) have been a part of the country’s political, cultural and economic history pre-dating the Europeans. Filipinos have a tendency to innately trust a Chinese merchant and more often even more than they do fellow Filipinos. This may have played a big part on why Chinese run stalls are more attractive to Filipino shoppers, more so if they are able to interact with the Chinese owners themselves.
Recently, in order to attract shoppers with more purchasing capabilities, air conditioned malls have dominated the previously stall riddled streets of Divisoria. Some conveniences of a regular mall like air conditioning, escalators, food courts, parking lots and clean restrooms where incorporated as new standards. Stalls would be arranged in an array with a grid configuration. With all these new upgrades, prices of goods had been managed not to significantly change since competition among the retailers plus the option for bulk purchases made sure that operation costs were nullified.
Are all of these good news to us?

Let’s look at it this way. A shopper who normally couldn’t afford a bag would need to save money first to be able to purchase a durable bag from a reputable store. Once he finally gets this quality product, he will take care of it and use it according to what it’s meant for. On the other hand, with the availability of cheaper but less durable alternatives, he was able to afford another bag of probably the same size but at the fraction of the cost. Obviously, he was able to save money. With this in mind, having saved an amount, he went ahead and added some items on his list representing what he was able to save. It may be a shirt, a clock, or even another type of bag. If we examine this closely, people would have more tendencies to purchase non-essential items that they could do without to begin with. What are these? Anyone who has been to these malls would know what I mean. From ribbons, to fake jewelries, curtains, paperweights of all sizes, wristwatches, footwear, different colored mugs, toys and even tools to name a few.
What if the cheap bag wouldn’t last a month? Then for the same amount spent, he has a broken bag and a lot of non-essential items he couldn’t use.
The better option is to take advantage of affordability while considering a good estimate of its utility relative to the cost. If you could get like three or more for the price of one, ensure that the usability could be extended more than the expensive counterpart.
Now, buying affordable products has a lot of advantages. There’s no doubt about it. But more often most of these are practically items that we will throw away after a short time. Either we get them as gifts, or buy them not because we need them but because we are amused with the fact that they’re affordable. I myself couldn’t vouch for any product I’ve acquired this way and used for quite a while. The illusion of getting things cheap is actually getting a lot of them cheap which eventually ends up without any usable value; which in turn would mean that you were better off without to begin with. Aside from this obvious disadvantage, all these cheap stuff end up as trash. Once it’s imported, we could not export it back overseas as garbage.
I must admit though, that the points I’ve stressed here are also for me. Like any other bargain hunter, I couldn’t resist the fact of having a lot of stuff in a bag after a shopping trip from Divisoria. But every now and then, I realize that it cost me more since after all the money I sunk there, those things are nowhere to be found. A lot were given out as gifts but most of them I have already thrown away….